Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/378

Shortly afterwards he obtained the king's assent to a new treaty of commerce and extradition which was ratified by the governor-general on 26 Nov. 1867. In 1868 he was placed in charge of a political mission sent to the Chinese frontier to inquire into the causes of the cessation of overland trade between Burmah and China, and to obtain information respecting the shans, kakyens, and panthays. Leaving Mandalay on 13 Jan., he proceeded via Bhamo to Maulmein or Teng-yueh Chu, the frontier town of the Chinese province of Yunnan, where he stayed six weeks, but was prevented from proceeding further by the disturbed state of the country. The mission reached Bhamo, on its return journey, 3 Sept., having acquired much valuable information about an almost unknown country. From 1876 to 1885 Sladen was commissioner of the Arakan division; and in the latter year he accompanied the force sent against King Thebaw, as chief political officer. In this capacity, on the arrival of the British troops at Mandalay, on 28 Dec. 1885, he entered the royal palace, and received the king's submission. In a speech on 17 Feb. 1886 the governor-general, Lord Dufferin, made special mention of ‘Colonel Sladen, to whose courage and knowledge of the people we are so much indebted for the surrender of the king.’

On 26 Nov. 1886 Sladen was knighted, and on 14 April 1887 he retired from the service. He died in London on 4 Jan. 1890. He had married, in 1861, Sophia Catherine, daughter of Richard Pryce Harrison, Bengal civil service. She died in 1865, and in 1880 he married, secondly, Kate, the daughter of Robert Russell Carew of Carpenden Park, Hertfordshire, who survives him. Besides his ‘Official Narrative of the Expedition to China via Bhamo’ (Rangoon, 1869), he wrote a paper on the geographical results of the mission, which is printed in the ‘Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,’ vol. xv.

[Mandalay to Momein, by John Anderson, M.D., 1876; Parliamentary Papers, Burma, 1886; Madras Army Lists; British Burma Administration Reports; Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, February 1890.]

SLANE, PHILIP of (d. 1326), bishop of Cork, was born at Slane in Meath. He became a Dominican friar, and on 20 Feb. 1321 was papally provided to the bishopric of Cork, receiving the temporalities on 17 July following. In March 1323 he was employed on a papal commission concerning the canons of Cloyne, and in 1324 is said to have gone on a mission to the pope concerning the ecclesiastical affairs of Ireland. He died about the end of 1326. Philip of Slane was author of an abridgment of the ‘Topographia Hiberniæ’ of Giraldus Cambrensis, which he dedicated to John XXII as ‘humilis capellanus frater Philippus ordinis Predicatorum, ecclesiæ Corkagensis in Hibernia minister.’ This abridgment is contained in Addit. MS. 19513 in the British Museum. There is a Provençal version of it in Addit. MS. 17920.

SLANEY, ROBERT AGLIONBY (1792–1862), advocate of rural and economic reform, was the representative of a family traditionally derived from Slany (Schlan), a small town in Bohemia, near Prague, but settled in Shropshire since the end of the sixteenth century (Visitation of Shropshire, 1623, Harl. Soc. vol. xxix. 1889). He was born in June 1792, being the eldest son of Robert Slaney of Hatton Grange in Shropshire, and of Mary, daughter of Thomas Mason of Shrewsbury. After a few terms at Trinity College, Cambridge, he married in 1812, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1817. He joined the Oxford circuit, and practised till 1826, when he obtained a seat in parliament as member for Shrewsbury, and soon became known by his ‘benevolent exertions to ameliorate the condition of the poor’ (Speech of the Duke of Richmond, see Hansard, new ser. 1830, xxiii. 481). In July 1834 he spoke on the Poor Laws Amendment Act. In the same year he succeeded, on the death of his father, to the property at Hatton Grange. He was defeated in 1835, but was re-elected to the parliament which met in November 1837, holding his seat till 1841. During this period he spoke frequently on subjects dealing with agricultural improvement and economical reform generally, serving also on committees appointed to investigate these and similar subjects. He moved for the appointment of a committee for inquiring into the condition of the labouring classes, spoke on national education, the Irish poor laws (in 1838), enclosure bills, factory regulation, highways, public walks, rating of tenements (1839), duties on timber, inquiry into charities, emigration, the poor-law commission (1840), health of the metropolis, and school rates (1841). He was chairman of the committee on education in 1838, and on the health of the poorer classes in large towns in 1840; and he edited, with prefaces, the reports of both committees. From 1843 to 1846 he was an active commissioner on the health of towns, in which capacity he investigated and